Good Looking, Bloated Patsiche of Dozens of Other Sci Fi Films

Rating: 4/10 (18 August 2005)

"The Island" is a bloated pastiche of dozens of science fiction movies magnified with an enormous budget. The DVD could come with pop-up footnotes of every other movie that's referenced -- from "Logan's Run," to "Brazil," to "1984," to "Coma," and even Woody Allen's "Sleepers," and on and on and on.
With about forty-five minutes of exaggerated, laughably ridiculous chases from bad guys who can't shoot straight cut out, or else there's another twist that the lead characters are really cats with nine lives, there could have been a serviceable pedestrian futuristic thriller with visually entertaining production design, comparable to "Imposter" and somewhat better than "Paycheck," though both had more substance from their Philip Dick stories than this film.
It is refreshing to have a docile society broken-through first by human curiosity before it gets around, very briefly, to sex (as learned from Scarlett Johansson's Calvin Klein commercial), which somehow leads to the sudden development of a contagious moral sense of human bonds that abruptly crosses over to an effective Djimon Hounsou.
Almost everything about it is confusing, from the time setting that is far enough into the 21st century for technological development and various building abandonment, but not so far away that a blizzard of contemporary product placement is still possible, as the social, economic, environmental and political structures seem pretty much the same as the present. Sometimes the plot holes that go by are quickly covered up further on with passing dialog. Humor also helps, particularly with Steve Buscemi and plays on Ewan McGregor's real life persona.
But the faults of this film have to lie far more at the hands of director Michael Bay than the writers or the overwhelmed actors, whose blue screen outlines can be glimpsed. On "The Tonight Show," McGregor had described other filmed scenes that involved more human interaction and could yet show up on the DVD.
The classical riffs in the soundtrack are borrowed to good propulsive effect to try and differentiate the endless chase scenes.
While we do see where all the money went, shouldn't Bay get as much financial backlash as Cimino did for "Heaven's Gate"?